"European authoritarians and their enablers in the media are misrepresenting GrapheneOS and even Pixel phones as if they're something for criminals. GrapheneOS is opposed to the mass surveillance police state these people want to impose on everyone"
State employees in their official capacity making inaccurate claims to media about GrapheneOS to smear it as being for criminals and as the users as largely being criminals is a state sponsored attack on the GrapheneOS project.
This is all based off a one-line quote, by one police officer, interviewed anonymously in one newspaper in its "society" column. I don't want to go against the feeding frenzy, but, I think this one's a bit over-interpreted.
> "Cada vegada que veiem un Google Pixel pensem que pot ser un narcotraficant"
(You'd have to navigate through four layers of links to find this: two layers of androidauthority linking to itself, then through xatakandroid, then finally you get to the primary source, the Catalan-language daily Ara. Though, for reasons, it's linking to a Spanish-language machine translation of the Catalan original—the "es." subdomain, which says Traducción no verificada at the top. So, we're five levels removed from the primary source, which is one sentence, which has gone through two rounds of machine translation (ca -> es -> en)).
The anti-privacy movement in Europe is really concerning.
In particular as general population don't really care about it, we are going toward some major shifts.
I'm wondering though how this radical turn was initiated and if some lobbies are pulling the strings behind the scene...
The argument "why do you care about your privacy if you have nothing to hide" needs to be addressed. The problem with this argument is you don't decide what you need to hide or not, the authorities do, and we all know authorities can be corrupted. Just look at the US government right now for example A.
Just as an example. You are gay. You live in a gay friendly place. Until one day, a new government takes office that will incarcerate gay people. They now have access to every one's phones who previously had nothing to hide.
Everyone is commenting as if this is an attack on privacy. Read the article, I might have missed it, but I saw literally nothing on this.
The main point is that police are profiling people using Pixel phones. Nothing about making it illegal, or trying to remove encryption.
Look, I literally have a Pixel phone running Mullvad. I care about privacy. But everyone here is reading the headline and arguing against a strawman.
This should be a discussion on how valid it is for police to profile people. Or maybe if it's actually true that drug dealers are using GrapheneOS.
Europe _is_ attacking encryption and privacy. But this is not it.
I use grapheneOS, it's the reason I bought a pixel but not for nefarious reasons but rather I don't like how much control Google has (it's ironic I had to buy a google phone) on android phones even from other manufacturers and the targeted marketing and information that I would be giving out. I also don't like that Android implimented the feature where you couldn't access the Android>Data folder for 'security reasons' and have to plug it into a computer to access any of those sub folders, it's my phone let me do what I want with it. Graphene lets me access any of those folders without issue
> One could say the same thing about matchboxes being used for arson and cash being used for money laundering, but no one’s calling on regulators to outlaw either.
Matchboxes -- OK. But cash is certainly a target. It is also relatively easy to push, as using a card is so much easier! Look at Sweden and presumably other countries where cash is basically gone. And no (loud) protests from privacy advocates that it is even hard to get cash today. I will just use an app to lend you 10 EUR for the beer.
Also throughout the world, using cash is only possible legally up to a given amount (a few thousand EURs ATM, but still) -- because large sums of cash are suspicious. Of course large amounts of money are suspicious because only criminals would even want to pay large amounts of money, right? Like, pay for a car or a vacation, or pay rent or taxes.
Speaking of which, in many countries, it is basically impossible to pay taxes in cash, although technically, it should be allowed. Like in Germany. Or pay for a bus ticket in cash. But some poor souls don't have a bank account. Hmm...
Some countries deanonymize cash by embedding RFID chips (e.g., Australia).
Of course it is not done for surveillance, but only for good goals.
Meta: broken all possible privacy laws with "localhost tracking"
Me: f*ck off, enough, time to buy pixel and grapheneos
Govt: meta pays _me_ $32bln for breaking _your_ privacy. What? You want to defend yourself? You are a criminal, then! That way, Meta wouldn't pay me again!
Monopolies are the only source of crime throughout history.
Monopolies are the brightest sign of collective irresponsibility.
Monopolies are useless for society in their attempts "to compete", since they are only trying to leverage their size and thus eventually bring harm.
With these days $ numbers, they can be so big, that they create a cantillion effect on market just because of their existance on market even without manipulation. Should be resected, dissasembled and limited in their further growth, including govt bodies, incentivized to decentralize.
I think we aren't far from GrapheneOS being rendered unusable. We desperately need to make Linux phones viable daily drivers. Desperately. It's the only way we'll have access to critical funcionality while being independent from mega corporations like Google and whatever they decide to do with AOSP and their Pixel phones. Right now everything regarding our privacy is in their filthy hands.
I installed GrapheneOS just recently and I'm in the process of migrating all my various apps to it.
I like my privacy and I'm also incredibly boring if anyone cares to track my interests and activities. I choose privacy to save the authorities wasting any more of their precious time and resources on little ol' me. And to minimise the value any vampiric tech company may be able to squeeze out of me.
In my limited, but specific, experience, the police will latch on to anything that makes an individual stand out from the vanilla drones as "evidence enough". So be warned. If you're feeling rebellious though, GrapheneOS will scratch a certain itch.
I cannot say I am surprised. You care about your privacy -> you are a criminal. "If you are not a criminal, you have nothing to hide.". sighs.
I wish people realized that privacy and civil liberties exist regardless of guilt. Rights like freedom of speech, due process, and privacy aren't just for people doing something wrong. They're foundational protections that exist to prevent abuse (by cops, too).
GrapheneOS lost me on PR. For every updates they post on their social media there's guaranteed to be a rant about how other projects are doing things Wrong. They talk down on any and every security- and privacy-related projects (or open-source projects in general) if they align even slightly out of line according to their idea of security and privacy, regardless of their own merit. Dig even deeper they also like throwing around the word "slander" and "attack" without backing it up. In fact I am certain I will be greeted with a friendly wall of text by somebody from GOS in this very thread sooner rather than later.
GrapheneOS is the most secure, arguably most private, hell the most feature-complete, user-friendly custom ROM (but they also hate the word "custom ROM") out there. I've imported a Pixel, because it wasn't available in my country, just to use GOS. So it is deeply frustrating that they are doing things the way they do. Hubris is their longest-standing, "wontfix"-labelled vulnerability.
In a true democracy where government serves the people, the people would be opaque to the government and the government would be transparent(nothing to hide) to the people. As we can't impose transparency on government, we can at least obtain opacity for ourselves.
I like my privacy. I'm not using grapheneOS yet because I've not bought one of the limited number of devices it can run on.
But honestly, of course criminals are gonna use these devices with grapheneOS, for the same reasons any one interested in their privacy would. And if the police notice a trend towards it why wouldn't they state so and look to use that as an indicator. Why is there a probkem with this?
This is an old, tired lesson: technology is morally neutral. It can serve equally well both good and bad purposes, and there's no way to coax technology make moral decisions for you.
Banning a technology in an attempt to limit its bad uses still dispropotrinally affects it good uses: legitimate, law-abiding users are less prone to breaking the rules than criminals, who break the rules by definition.
We have seen this happening again and again, from hi-tech things like encryption and DRM to basic stuff like knives. But fear and moral panic very often overcome the voice of reason, of which we are seeing another case.
That got me interested in it for the privacy claims, but unfortunately it only supports Pixel phones. The reasons are technical and fair. It's just unfortunate that Pixel isn't sold or supported in many countries in the world. I live in Brazil and even in Mercado Libre where it's supposed to support the entire Mercosul market, I can't find a single Pixel 8 for purchase. It's sad we're excluded from accessing this amazing project.
This is the best possible advertisement in these computer-savvy circles. I guess my next phone will be a Pixel with Graphene. I won't do anything illegal on it. If even the police hate it, it must be very safe from hackers.
Governments are a lot like abusive parents: they see people as difficult kids that must be managed. They believe that what they do helps them become good adults, but in reality they just love to control and abuse people. Rejecting this abusive parenting or simply setting personal boundaries makes them really angry and suspicious, and get you labelled a criminal. In the future, when thought-reading brain implants will be a thing, you will be labelled a criminal for not having one, for hiding your thoughts or even for refusing to have your thoughts managed by that device.
With this news, I am inclined towards buying Pixel and install GrapheneOS in the future just to stick to the pro-mass surveillance police state. However, I am concerned about the warranty. Does anyone know if installing Graphene on Pixel eliminate the hardware warranty?
Also, what do these cops and government officials say about iPhones? iPhones, according to what I've heard, also have good privacy, is that not true? Is it not private enough for criminals?
When I see articles like this, I'm conflicted with a number of thoughts. There's a strong factor of engagement baiting and engaging with it spreads the messaging.
GrapheneOS is a great project that allows people to have some control over their devices. This is important for receiving patches when manufacturers have abandoned them for whatever reasons. I've used GrapheneOS to revitalize old devices with some success. Additionally, having the option for privacy is fundamental to security and I would argue is important to help maintain democracy. I do not like seeing these attacks on those trying to maintain control of their own devices. There are processes for checking areas of concern and when a cellular device is connected to a network, it's up to those external parties to follow the proper procedures in place.
I suppose as a write my comment my level of tolerance for bullshit continues to be pressed. Because there is too much bullshit to adequately deconstruct here.
its a bit ironic governments push policies advocating for user privacy and data protection etc. yet criminalize use of good encryption and privacy preserving technologies. :')
i guess it's their usual trademark tho -_- 'ew, war is bad' drops bombs on children via proxy state
Luckily, they still, in most countries, need to actually _prove_ criminality. But the line there is also growing ever thinner... confiscating your device as_if you are a criminal despite not being able to prove anything... - they will happily destroy your qubes laptop rather than admit they can't prove anything.
You either unlock it for them, or see it destroyed.
This to the point that if you care about privacy and want to travel internationally, i'd say, take a burner phone u use for holidays and get the local sim -_-. if they take that, nothing is lost except a few $$ for a cheap device.
The core issue here is that privacy concerned looks the same to police regardless of motivations - criminal or principled.
That does sweep up innocents in the net. But at same time if police see a strong correlation with criminals then focus on it from their side seems logical too. Forcing them to intentionally be blind to that sort of correlation seems insane too.
This is ridiculous ignorance and akin to Canada's near ban on the Flipper Zero. We might as well ban cars because they can be used to transport drugs and dead bodies.
I have run Graphene on my phone for some time. I'm not doing anything illegal with my phone or using it for nefarious purposes. I'm just not comfortable with Google (or any entity) having so much data about me.
Going to seriously consider Graphene for my next phone. Does it work only on pixel or any other android, what are the minimum requirements? (pardon, non tech HN user here).
This trope of "I have nothing to hide" is really tired.
People, it's fine to have things to hide. You can write a blog post and admit you have things to hide. Everyone has things to hide.
For one thing, you can care about hiding the private information that friends have shared with you. Nobody should assume that all their friends and contacts will be super happy about having some stranger at a border paw through their private emails, chats, and photos. Yes, you do have things to hide. It's called basic human privacy.
Please stop saying "I have nothing to hide" unless you're some sort of sociopath who is willing to give up the private addresses, emails, phone numbers, and details of all your friends, family members, and contacts.
I don't trust Graphene but I want to. Who are the devs and who are their sponsors? I worry about supply chain attacks. Why should I trust their supply chain and anon devs?
any method of evading the ever-increasing centralization and regulation of society will inevitably be destroyed. efficient policing demands these obstacles be removed.
Just saying "Catalunian" or even "Spanish" instead of only "cops" may get the article less clicks but it would've gone a long way at least pretending to be a worthwhile read. This is a very narrow case in point for basically advocating for a specific product not a class of products. That smells like a sales pitch to me.
Would very much like something like this. But I still don't get it .. a system that cuts out g**gle, but is based on g**gle hardware? How could that grow or last?
..
In the meantime, using an Android with location disabled, Duck browser, and bare minimum apps.
each and every technology has and will be used in the commision of the very worst possible crimes.
anything can and is bieng weaponised.
any rational society would simply use our vast data sets to determine which specific preventable harm is effecting the most humans and can be elliminated for the lowest cost and effort.....do that, and then start working on the now new greatest harm ellimination.
but in spite of asking and trying to figure this out myself, I can find no effort to actualy just gather that data and work from there
.....everything is just another "cause".....for debate
They spew assertions like this not so that people believe them but so that they can reference them when establishing probably cause, applying for warrants, etc.
I tried to read this article on digital privacy but after five minutes spent unticking boxes allowing my usage data to be sent to an augean list of data collectors I gave up and left.
Cops say criminals use a Google Pixel with GrapheneOS – I say that's freedom
(androidauthority.com)626 points by pabs3 23 July 2025 | 457 comments
Comments
"European authoritarians and their enablers in the media are misrepresenting GrapheneOS and even Pixel phones as if they're something for criminals. GrapheneOS is opposed to the mass surveillance police state these people want to impose on everyone"
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114784469162979608
State employees in their official capacity making inaccurate claims to media about GrapheneOS to smear it as being for criminals and as the users as largely being criminals is a state sponsored attack on the GrapheneOS project.
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114813613250805804
https://es.ara.cat/sociedad/sucesos/guerra-tecnologica-movil... ("Guerra tecnológica: el móvil de los narcos contra los troyanos de la policía")
or https://www.ara.cat/societat/successos/guerra-tecnologica-mo... ("Guerra tecnològica: el mòbil dels narcos contra els troians de la policia")
> "Cada vegada que veiem un Google Pixel pensem que pot ser un narcotraficant"
(You'd have to navigate through four layers of links to find this: two layers of androidauthority linking to itself, then through xatakandroid, then finally you get to the primary source, the Catalan-language daily Ara. Though, for reasons, it's linking to a Spanish-language machine translation of the Catalan original—the "es." subdomain, which says Traducción no verificada at the top. So, we're five levels removed from the primary source, which is one sentence, which has gone through two rounds of machine translation (ca -> es -> en)).
Just as an example. You are gay. You live in a gay friendly place. Until one day, a new government takes office that will incarcerate gay people. They now have access to every one's phones who previously had nothing to hide.
Look, I literally have a Pixel phone running Mullvad. I care about privacy. But everyone here is reading the headline and arguing against a strawman.
This should be a discussion on how valid it is for police to profile people. Or maybe if it's actually true that drug dealers are using GrapheneOS. Europe _is_ attacking encryption and privacy. But this is not it.
Matchboxes -- OK. But cash is certainly a target. It is also relatively easy to push, as using a card is so much easier! Look at Sweden and presumably other countries where cash is basically gone. And no (loud) protests from privacy advocates that it is even hard to get cash today. I will just use an app to lend you 10 EUR for the beer.
Also throughout the world, using cash is only possible legally up to a given amount (a few thousand EURs ATM, but still) -- because large sums of cash are suspicious. Of course large amounts of money are suspicious because only criminals would even want to pay large amounts of money, right? Like, pay for a car or a vacation, or pay rent or taxes.
Speaking of which, in many countries, it is basically impossible to pay taxes in cash, although technically, it should be allowed. Like in Germany. Or pay for a bus ticket in cash. But some poor souls don't have a bank account. Hmm...
Some countries deanonymize cash by embedding RFID chips (e.g., Australia).
Of course it is not done for surveillance, but only for good goals.
Me: f*ck off, enough, time to buy pixel and grapheneos
Govt: meta pays _me_ $32bln for breaking _your_ privacy. What? You want to defend yourself? You are a criminal, then! That way, Meta wouldn't pay me again!
Monopolies are the only source of crime throughout history.
Monopolies are the brightest sign of collective irresponsibility.
Monopolies are useless for society in their attempts "to compete", since they are only trying to leverage their size and thus eventually bring harm.
With these days $ numbers, they can be so big, that they create a cantillion effect on market just because of their existance on market even without manipulation. Should be resected, dissasembled and limited in their further growth, including govt bodies, incentivized to decentralize.
I like my privacy and I'm also incredibly boring if anyone cares to track my interests and activities. I choose privacy to save the authorities wasting any more of their precious time and resources on little ol' me. And to minimise the value any vampiric tech company may be able to squeeze out of me.
In my limited, but specific, experience, the police will latch on to anything that makes an individual stand out from the vanilla drones as "evidence enough". So be warned. If you're feeling rebellious though, GrapheneOS will scratch a certain itch.
I wish people realized that privacy and civil liberties exist regardless of guilt. Rights like freedom of speech, due process, and privacy aren't just for people doing something wrong. They're foundational protections that exist to prevent abuse (by cops, too).
GrapheneOS is the most secure, arguably most private, hell the most feature-complete, user-friendly custom ROM (but they also hate the word "custom ROM") out there. I've imported a Pixel, because it wasn't available in my country, just to use GOS. So it is deeply frustrating that they are doing things the way they do. Hubris is their longest-standing, "wontfix"-labelled vulnerability.
But honestly, of course criminals are gonna use these devices with grapheneOS, for the same reasons any one interested in their privacy would. And if the police notice a trend towards it why wouldn't they state so and look to use that as an indicator. Why is there a probkem with this?
* Touch of Evil, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052311/quotes/?item=qt0321627
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_of_Evil
Banning a technology in an attempt to limit its bad uses still dispropotrinally affects it good uses: legitimate, law-abiding users are less prone to breaking the rules than criminals, who break the rules by definition.
We have seen this happening again and again, from hi-tech things like encryption and DRM to basic stuff like knives. But fear and moral panic very often overcome the voice of reason, of which we are seeing another case.
But in reality, I think this is a scare piece meant to drive people away from using graphing OS.
Also, what do these cops and government officials say about iPhones? iPhones, according to what I've heard, also have good privacy, is that not true? Is it not private enough for criminals?
GrapheneOS is a great project that allows people to have some control over their devices. This is important for receiving patches when manufacturers have abandoned them for whatever reasons. I've used GrapheneOS to revitalize old devices with some success. Additionally, having the option for privacy is fundamental to security and I would argue is important to help maintain democracy. I do not like seeing these attacks on those trying to maintain control of their own devices. There are processes for checking areas of concern and when a cellular device is connected to a network, it's up to those external parties to follow the proper procedures in place.
I suppose as a write my comment my level of tolerance for bullshit continues to be pressed. Because there is too much bullshit to adequately deconstruct here.
Cops in [Spain] think everyone using a Google Pixel must be a drug dealer
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44473694
i guess it's their usual trademark tho -_- 'ew, war is bad' drops bombs on children via proxy state
Luckily, they still, in most countries, need to actually _prove_ criminality. But the line there is also growing ever thinner... confiscating your device as_if you are a criminal despite not being able to prove anything... - they will happily destroy your qubes laptop rather than admit they can't prove anything.
You either unlock it for them, or see it destroyed.
This to the point that if you care about privacy and want to travel internationally, i'd say, take a burner phone u use for holidays and get the local sim -_-. if they take that, nothing is lost except a few $$ for a cheap device.
That does sweep up innocents in the net. But at same time if police see a strong correlation with criminals then focus on it from their side seems logical too. Forcing them to intentionally be blind to that sort of correlation seems insane too.
Tricky
I have run Graphene on my phone for some time. I'm not doing anything illegal with my phone or using it for nefarious purposes. I'm just not comfortable with Google (or any entity) having so much data about me.
By the same logic, anyone who has a knife in their kitchen is a suspect.
In fact, if cops say a thing there's a reasonable chance that it's the opposite of what I should be listening to.
EDIT: sad, Pixel 3a no longer supported, too old
People, it's fine to have things to hide. You can write a blog post and admit you have things to hide. Everyone has things to hide.
For one thing, you can care about hiding the private information that friends have shared with you. Nobody should assume that all their friends and contacts will be super happy about having some stranger at a border paw through their private emails, chats, and photos. Yes, you do have things to hide. It's called basic human privacy.
Please stop saying "I have nothing to hide" unless you're some sort of sociopath who is willing to give up the private addresses, emails, phone numbers, and details of all your friends, family members, and contacts.
they literally planted an backdoor that federal agency can force google to give out information
Cops say guns are only for bad guys.
Cops say 3d printers and bitcoin are for terrorists
Cops say a lot of dumb things because they are generally (and necessarily) not that bright, but also because they are lazy and frequently corrupt.
"encrypted phone" = criminal